We’ve turned a corner on the boat. More stuff is going in than is being taken out. This means coatings: layers of paint, varnish, shellac, etc. to protect the new materials and construction inside and outside the boat. As you can imagine, salt water is a rather harsh environment, so this is a pretty important step, one they luckily don’t entrust to me directly.
I am still working around the process every day, though, which exposes me to the fumes. Today was paint and varnish day, with a top coat of paint on the upper hull, anti-fouling paint on the bottom, and varnish on the new beds, fixtures, and walls in some of the staterooms on the lower deck. In other words, very few places on the boat not being doused in something noxious.
As you may have guessed, the regulations regarding carbon chain polymers, resins, petroleum and acetate products, and basically anything designed to stick to anything else are not as stringent here in the Philippines as they are in the U.S. Good for lasting integrity of boat coatings,. Bad for brain cells.
Inhalants are branch of the psychotropic tree I have never stood on and bounced. I just think I would have trouble taking myself seriously while huffing gasoline or model airplane glue. Perhaps my disinterest in said substances never blossomed due to the fact that the makers of that gateway inhalant, Liquid Paper, shifted to a non-toxic formula when I was still in early grade school and we dealt with mistakes the old fashioned way, with the pink end of a number two pencil. Anyways, killing my brain cells fast enough that my body panics and releases endorphins because it thinks I am in critical danger and pain just never caught on with me.
Perhaps I have been cheating myself all these years. I was loopy as a loon today. Thank goodness for handrails or I might have walked right off the boat. I was doing finish carpentry, a job for which I am more woefully unskilled than painting even. I was reassembling the dining room, ‘mess’ in boat jargon. Oh so aptly named by the end of my day. When we took it apart, all the trim, molding, tongue and groove slatted walls, and finish pieces, we meticulously numbered and labeled them and stacked them neatly. Then, over the course of a month, we thrashed the room, moved everything five times, shuffled all the piles, and walked on more than a few of the pieces. I say this simply to give you an idea of the starting conditions.
Then add toxic fumes. Even though I was not working in an area directly exposed to them, every time the breeze shifted I started having trouble remembering my measurements on the way back and forth to the saw. Numbered boards were confused, misplaced, seemingly mislabeled. By lunch I was having trouble remembering how to use the saw. By the end of the day, I just didn’t care. You guys have got to come out to Chuuk if for no other reason than to start at one end of the mess and walk all the way around, taking in the progression of my work over the course of the day. It would be quite funny if it weren’t so, what’s the word? Permanent. With the windows newspapered to prevent overspray from the painter, it is nice and dark in the mess. As every college grad and bachelor with a touch of romance knows, mood lighting hides a lot of dirt and, in this case, poor carpentry. I am nervous about the inevitable unmasking.
That’s just me on the upper deck, too. There’s a lady who does staining and varnishing who spent all day in an enclosed room with the stuff, below decks. She just started working on our boat last week, as we began having fresh carpentry available for staining, and she struck me as being a little off. Something beyond the language barrier. Something in the way she babbled to anyone who came near her, and to herself if she was alone. Something to do with the way she zoned out while running the orbital sander back and forth over the same piece of wood for hours. Something about that demented, snaggletoothed cackle. Now I know! She’s pickled! And having a fine time of it too. Good for her, I say. I’m not condoning that you all go soak a rag in paint thinner and see for yourselves, mind you, I’m just saying that one man’s combustible propellant is another man’s livelihood is yet another man’s Saturday evening.
